Template Freebie #1

Back from a long hiatus with my first template. Tell me what you think. :)

{Inter} National Scrapbooking Day

I'm so excited! My first National Scrapbooking Day as a digi scrapper! Soooo much easier to shop good sales and deals from the comfort of my own office chair. I'm still in my jammies!

Here are the deals I'll be browsing today:

There is a storewide 50% off at Elemental Scraps. Chrissy W has an NSD freebie template only available for a few days, and Bella Gypsy has a Buy 1 kit, get a free template set deal going on too. Spend $10 in the store and get 4 free kits worth $20, all outdoor themed.

The Sweet Shoppe has a storewide 30% off sale and are also offering a huge collab kit for free if you spend $10 today. Lots of pretty colors in this kit, some neutrals and purples. I don't know if I'll make the $10 total, though.

ScrapMatters has a storewide 40% off sale!

Digital Candy is having a storewide 30% off sale.

In other news, this morning I am inspired by this article over at the Daily Digi. I'm going to take some time to scrap a page today about digital scrapbooking. I want to be sure to actually scrap today since that's what the day is really all about. I remember my first National Scrapbooking Day in 1999, where I attended a Creative Memories crop with two good friends. I even remember the layout I scrapped - it was all about a musical I choreographed in college, Godspell.

I think my style has evolved a tiny bit, what do you think? :)

Happy National Scrapbooking Day, and have fun shopping AND scrapping!

Prayer Board Project

I finished a big hybrid project just in time for Easter. I made a prayer board for the family fridge. It holds pictures of our family members, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, to be switched out every day. A friend of mine made one for her kids several years ago and I've always kept it in mind for when I had kids old enough to appreciate it. It was easy peasy to do it digitally!


First I made a 12X12 scrapbook page and left enough space for a picture, a tab with the person (or couple's) name, and a pocket to hold all the pictures. I printed the page and cut a small slit on the top and the sides of the pocket to hold the pictures. I also had some pictures printed and trimmed them to 4X4. I glued the page down to a 12X12 cardboard, leaving room inside the pocket for the pictures. I printed some tabs, adhered velcro to the pictures and tabs, and magnets to the back of the board and I was done! When not in use, the pictures and tabs are velcroed together and stored in the pocket. I plan on making more to give as gifts, especially to our godchildren.


Here is what the page looks like printed:


And here is the completed prayer board up on our fridge:



Credits: Mandy Mystiques' Little Back Pocket; Cori Gammon's Nicholas alpha; Cross element from Misty Cato & Julie Billinger's Because He First Loved Us kit

Catching Up On Christmas

I got so many great pictures last Christmas, but once the holiday was past I just wasn't in the mood to scrap red and green pages. I finally dredged up the motivation today to scrap my favorite picture from Christmas Eve. It was taken by one of my hubby's cousins, of my daughter sleeping peacefully on my lap all dressed up in her Christmas dress. I ended up not using the red and green scheme at all, and I really like how simple and elegant the layout turned out.

Zillions of credits for this one: Christie Lemmon's Let It Snow alpha, Stitch from Sweet Blossom's Sweet Lilac, Ribbon from Joyce Paul's Dark Fairytale, Papers (recolored) from MIO's Gloss and Charm, Flowers by Janny Lynn, Heart stitch by Redju Designs

Speed Scrap 2

My hubby is the best. After a few long days with sick kiddos... my daughter had a fever for almost three days straight... he knew I needed a break and put BOTH kids to bed, cleaned up the house and made me my favorite snack (roasted chickpeas) all while I did another speed scrap at the JM digi scrap board. I'm really happy with this page, it's nice to get some older pictures scrapped and done. Today everyone is feeling almost back to normal and now I have some pictures from our trip to the zoo this morning to scrap!

Credits: Julie Marie Designs Earth Wings 2 freebie mini; frame is by Mandy Mystiques; tape is by Angie Kovacs from her Just A Boy kit; string is by Cori Gammon from her Nicholas kit.

Wagon Ride

Just a quickie today. Both the kids are sick and clingy so I didn't have much time to scrap this afternoon. Hubby and I took the kids for a wagon ride last month when it was still a little chilly out. I thought my daughter would be scared or complain about the cold, but she giggled the entire time. I think she felt like such a big girl, she's really starting to want to do everything her brother does!

Credits: Template by Chrissy W; Kit is Party in the Playroom by Janny Lynn; Cartoonish Alpha by Faith True

Easter Egg Hunt

On Sunday we had an Easter egg hunt for the cousins before dinner. We were excited that it was warm enough to have it outside this year!

Credits: Connie Prince Hippity Hoppity; template by Chrissy W.

First Speed Scrap

I participated in my first speed scrap last Friday night, hosted by Natalie and Vero over at the JM digi scrap board. It was really fun, but also a little stressful! I found it a bit out of my comfort zone, because when I approach a layout the first thing I have in mind is the overall design. So not to know how it's going to look, more or less, in the end was driving me nuts! But I think it turned out pretty well and if I do another speed scrap I'll have a better idea of how to go about it.

Credits: Mandy Mystiques Under the Sea; Cartoonish Alpha by Faith True; Heart stitch by Redju Designs

Doodle Crazy

I know I went a little doodle crazy on this one. I took these pics of my kids last month, and I've been itching to scrap them the moment I saw how well they turned out. My son is in a great phase right now where he's so gentle and loving toward his sister. I wish it would stay this way forever, but I'm sure there are tons of sibling squabbles ahead! I wanted to keep this layout fun and young and bright, so I turned to my doodle stash. I went a little nuts, but I like it anyway. :)



Credits:
Paper, butterfly & bee from Melissa Bennett's Playhouse kit
Doodle corners from Fee Jardine's Blush kit
Little Amy Lou alpha by Lauren Grier
Flowers by A Work in Progress Designs by Vicki
Journaling box from Fee Jardine's Sweet As kit
Scribble Arrow by Chaos Lounge

Park Page

I love finding templates good for multiple photos. It saves so much time! Here's a layout of a recent trip to the park.

Credits: Chrissy W's clustered template, papers and embellishments are from Mandy Mystiques' Little Back Pocket, Alphas are Robin Carlton's Doo Dots, Cori Gammon's Nicholas, Painted Chippy Alpha by Libby Weifenbach, and Silver Mine Bead Alpha by Blythe Evans.

Photography Composition Lesson #3

How are you doing? Is your head still swimming with rules? Have you been experimenting with your photos? This next lesson is a super simple and easy one, so don't worry. I'm giving you all a break! :)

If you haven't already, before you read this blog post you'll want to read Lesson #1 and Lesson #2.

Framing Your Subject

Framing your subject is a super easy way to draw quick attention to your focal point. There is NO doubt about what you're trying to show off in your photo if you frame your subject. Here are some pictures of mine to demonstrate what I mean:

A frame can go all the way around your subject, or it can just be on two or three sides of it. Unlike the other rules we've covered, this is just a technique you can use occasionally when it's convenient to really draw attention to what you want to highlight in your photo. Try it out this week and see if you can come up with a frame or two to try!

29 Things

I'm back after a brief hiatus! This spring is already hopping for me, but I did manage to squeeze in some scrapping in this weekend.

This layout was fun and quick because I snagged the journaling from my family blog. On hubby's birthday last November I blogged 29 things we love about him as a surprise.

Lots of credits for this one: Template by Chrissy W, Paper from Cori Gammon's Nicholas, flowers and swirl from Christie Lemmon's Little Charmer, date tabs by Sweet Blossom Designs, heart from Digi Designs by Nicole's All Girl kit, alphas are Danielle Corbitt's Crinkled Up Alpha, Blythe Evan's Silver Mine Bead Alpha, Robin Carlton's Doo Dots, and Flerg's Troublemaker alpha.

Photography Composition Lesson #2

It's Monday, so that means it's time for another photography lesson from me! If anyone out there has been experimenting with the rule of thirds, leave a comment with a link to your photo(s), I'd love to see them. If you haven't already read that first lesson, go here before continuing.

Directionality

This lesson is a relatively simple one. I'm calling it Directionality. This is not an official term I don't think, but it's my way of talking about photographing your subject while keeping in mind the direction the eye naturally moves across a picture.

Unless anyone out there is proficient in Hebrew, I'll assume my readers all read and write from left to right. Because we learn it this way, when we look at a piece of paper with words on it our eyes are trained to automatically start on the left of the page and move to the right. When viewing a picture there is a natural movement the eye wants to make as well. As a photographer it's your job of helping this natural movement along. There are two ways of doing this:

1. By helping the eye move from a focal point (something that is placed either along a line placed on a "third", or at the intersecting points in the picture) through the rest of the picture, or

2. By helping the eye enter a picture smoothly and right toward your focal point.

To demonstrate this first point, let's go back to this photo of my daughter Mary:

Because she is placed off center and according to the rule of thirds, I've photographed her in a way that your eye has room to move from her face over to what is in front of her, which gives you information about what she's doing at the time the picture was taken. This is the most common way directionality is taken into account while photographing subjects - by making sure to leave more room in the photo for whatever the subject is facing or looking at. The eye wants to move from the focal point of her face to what she's facing. This is especially helpful in scrapbooking, because you want your photos to help you tell the story or memory you're preserving.

Here's a good example of this: two versions of a picture I took the other day of my son in a tunnel at a playground:

Notice his head and body are off center, more or less at a line of third, and his entire body is in the shot. But does it feel awkward to you that you focus on his face and then your eye has nowhere really to go? Now take a look at the full version I captured on camera:

This picture is more visually appealing and tells a better story, I think. Your eye focuses on him and then has room to move in the direction he is moving. You get more of a feeling as to what is going on when the picture was taken, an important quality most scrapbookers would want to capture in their scrapbooking, I think.

Keep in mind something I said last time - sometimes rules can be broken, or at least tweaked a little! In this picture, my son is running but looking behind him. Which version do you like better? The one with more space in front of him, or behind him?

I think the second version provides the most visual interest. He's looking behind him, which causes the viewer to wonder, what is it he is running from? Another way to tweak the rule is to photograph more space behind the subject to show how far they've walked, for example. Really it all depends on the story you're trying to tell by taking the photo in the first place.

OK now we're moving on to the second point I mentioned earlier: How to help the eye enter a picture smoothly and right toward your focal point. The best way to do this is by using lines. Diagonal lines are the biggest attention getters as far as photos go. But any line in a photo will cause the eye to follow it, so you want the lines leading toward your subject if you can. The best way I can explain this is just by showing you, so here are a bunch of photos I've taken keeping the lines in mind:

In this first photo, notice the diagonal line of the sidewalk that draws the viewer in and up toward the subject of the photo. And in the following pictures, the slide and fence do the same thing.

In the below picture, the mower my son is playing with leads your eye up toward him in a way that taking the shot straight on might not have.

In this next shot, the cars as well as the rug lead your eye up the picture toward the focal point.

In the photo of my daughter below, I've moved over a bit so that the actual chair is creating a diagonal line up towards her, rather than photographing her straight on.

This next photo demonstrates both of my points well. The diagonal lines of the shore and water naturally lead the eye toward the subject, and there is more space in the direction he is looking, which would flow well with my accompanying journaling on a layout about how tentative he was about wading in the chilly lake.

One last tip: the way you angle your camera toward your subject can make your actual subject (or parts of him/her/it) a line. Here are a few photos to demonstrate what I mean. In these photos, I've positioned myself in such a way that my daugther is photographed somewhat diagonally. This causes your eye to move naturally right to her face.

And in this next photo, my son's outstretched arm while playing a game of peek-a-boo draws your attention straight to him.

And finally, I have homework for you! Take pictures while keeping the directionality of your subjects in mind. Experiment with lines and keep in mind what story you want to tell with the picture. This should help you position your subjects in a way that a viewer knows more of what you were trying to capture. Next week's lesson will be much shorter, thanks for hanging in there with me for so long this time! :)

Photography Composition Lesson #1

OK so admittedly I'm no expert at photography. But I did take a photography class, and my Dad is really knowledgeable in this area, and he's given me tons of tips. Also, a good friend of the family works as a professional photographer and I've absorbed a couple of things from him. Photos are obviously incredibly important to the art of scrapbooking, so I thought I'd share the few things that I know here on my blog.

What I know is all about composition. It's still trial and error for me to fiddle around with my camera's settings. You won't learn anything about aperture and shutter speed from me! So here's our first lesson in composition:

Rule of Thirds

Probably the most important thing you'll ever learn about composition is the rule of thirds. If you use a digital camera it is likely you even have a setting you can use to help you out with this. Look at your camera and see if it has a display button. Mine actually says "DISP". If you have this button, turn on your camera and point it at something, then press the button a few times. One of the displays you may see contains a bunch of intersecting lines. Your viewfinder will look like this:


Even if your camera doesn't have this setting, it's fairly easy to imagine the lines while you're shooting as well. These lines are to assist you in taking pictures according to the rule of thirds.

What is the rule of thirds? Well, the rule is based on the fact that when a person's eye looks at a photo, it more naturally tends toward the places those lines intersect rather than the middle of the photos. It will notice those four areas, as well as along the lines in the photo, first. So whatever is there will be the most noticeable to the person viewing the photo. What does this mean to the photographer? It means that it's important to position the objects you're trying to photograph in those places, rather than the direct middle of the frame. If you look again at the above photo you can see I've done just that. Mary is positioned along the left line, not directly in the middle of the photo. And her face is positioned right at an intersecting area.


Contrast that picture to this one:

In that photo, Mary's head appears almost directly in the center of the photo. This is called the bullseye effect that a lot of people mistakenly do when they're photographing something. See all that empty space above her head? It's way too noticeable. As the photographer who captured this image, it's not my intention to draw people's attention to the area above Mary's head. And that top imaginary line runs right through the top of her forehead, and that's what will be most noticeable to someone viewing it.

This rule definitely applies to photographing horizons. In this first photo you can see how I positioned the sky to take up about 1/3 of the picture and the land and water at about 2/3. Also, the leftmost tip of land ends at right about an intersecting line.

Here's the same photo cropped in a different, less appealing way. The sky takes up 1/2 of the photo, and there is absolutely nothing of interest placed in any of the areas your eye is most likely to go. This photo does nothing to really display the shoreline, the land, or the water. A photo like this causes me to wonder what the photographer was really even trying to capture.

By the way, not following the rule of thirds when you take the picture doesn't mean you can't crop it that way later on. A lot of times I fiddle around with the picture later on to get the most important objects positioned where I want them. And with a fast moving toddler this is a necessity, because he's pretty much never in the shot how I'd like him!

The thing about rules is, some of them are meant to be broken! The rule of thirds definitely applies in MANY pictures but possibly not in EVERY picture. And you may already be doing this rule naturally, because what looks appealing to someone viewing a photo will probably look appealing to you. Experiment with your pictures using the rule and see what you think.

That concludes our first lesson! :)

A Sprinkle Mess

I let my son decorate cupcakes all by himself for Valentine's Day this year and he made the biggest mess I've ever seen. I was still finding red and white sprinkles on the floor weeks later!

Love Struck by Melissa Bennett

Plain White Alpha by Melissa Bennett

Snow Fun

I need to peek around at some snow layouts in my favorite galleries, because I can never come up with a better title than "Snow Fun" for my outdoor winter pictures!

Scraplift of Linz's Let the Sunshine In.

Shanmomto4's Winter Warmth freebie kit

Frame by Heather Ann Designs

Bead Alpha by Amanda Dykan

Tea and Scones, Anyone?

In January my mother-in-law treated the girls in the family to a surprise tea party to celebrate my birthday. I actually had one tea themed freebie I downloaded awhile ago that I used to embellish this layout. Just looking at these pictures makes me want a scone!

Template by Meg Mullens; Papers and flowers from Savannah by Melissa Bennett; Teapot, cup, ribbon and alpha from Wild Cherry Tea by Ginger Scraps.

Giggle

There's no better sound than my kids giggling and playing together!

Template by Chrissy W; Papers are from Rainy Days by Gypsy Pixel Designs; Flowers are from Simply Adorable by Christie Lemmon; Crinkled Up Alpha by Danielle Corbitt

A Rare Appearance

I very rarely appear in pictures much less scrapbooking layouts, but here is proof that I do exist:

Template by Vanessa, from the Tracy Reed Valentine's Day template freebie assortment

Kit is Signs of Spring by Mandy Mystiques

Frame is by Julie Billingsley

Alpha by Krystal Hartley

Heart by Digi Designs by Nicole (from her All Girl kit)

My Little Fireman

I've been trying to scrap more pictures of my son, but my kit stash is seriously lacking in the boy themed kits department. However, I did pick up Kristin Cronin-Barrow's Lil Fireman mini kit in one of the Sweet Shoppe assortments awhile back. So when I sat down to scrap this pic of my son playing with his firetruck I knew exactly what to use for it!